Merchants spend a considerable amount of money on research about consumer purchasing trends in order to better target their marketing efforts to potential consumers. In the U.S.A., for example, merchants may pay thousands of dollars for consumer demographic data as well as Nielsen Media Research® ratings of television viewing behavior of consumers in order to target the dissemination of their respective television advertisements. Similarly, merchants may pay for analysis of data about computer users' ‘click paths’ which are reflective of Wide Web browsing habits and patterns, in order to target their respective Internet advertisements.
The relevancy of the merchants' marketing efforts is directly dependent on the respective context in which they are made. For example, an advertisement about a retirement plan will have greater success in enticing a television viewer to becoming a member of the retirement plan if it is displayed on a television channel geared for adult viewers rather than if it was displayed on a children's television network.
Unfortunately, even if marketing efforts are well tailored, they may not be timely delivered. For example, the consumer may not be able to act upon an impulse to make a purchase at the time of receiving a marketing coupon such as when the consumer receives a merchant's coupon in a newspaper, where the coupon is intended for in-store use. A typical problem with such marketing models is that, though initially the consumer's intent to act upon the coupon may be high, the consumer have may forget about the merchant's newspaper coupon shortly thereafter due to the length of time between the consumer's viewing of the newspaper coupon and the consumer's subsequent shopping trip. Consequently, the merchant's marketing efforts may be ineffective at facilitating a subsequent transaction between the consumer and the merchant.
Accordingly, it would be an advance in the art of commerce to provide timely and well tailored offer communications to facilitate subsequent transactions.